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What were you saying, child?" "Well, mother, I was going to say," answered Ruth, with a sigh, "that I must just have patience and be content to wait." "Now you talk like the dear, good, sensible little thing that you are," said Mrs Dotropy, rising; "run, put on your hat and I'll walk with you by the sea, or go visit the fisher-folk if you like or the Miss Seawards."
Anxiously did Ruth Dotropy await the return of Captain Bream to Yarmouth, and patiently did she refrain, in the meantime, from questioning Mrs Bright as to her history before marriage, for that good woman's objection to be so questioned was quite sufficient to check her sensitive spirit.
"Of course, of course, dear," replied Mrs Dotropy, who, however, experienced a slight feeling of annoyance at being thus dragged into a preliminary consideration of the affairs of poor people before paying a personal visit to them.
W'y, I've seed it blow that 'ard that it was fit to tear the masts out of us; an' once it throw'd us right over on our beam-ends." "On what ends, boy?" asked Mrs Dotropy, who was beginning to feel interested in the self-sufficient little fisherman. "Our beam-ends, ma'am. The beams as lie across under the deck, so that w'en we gits upon their ends, you know, we're pretty well flat on the water."
The day following that on which Mrs Dotropy and Ruth had gone out to visit "the poor," Jessie and Kate Seaward received a visit from a man who caused them no little anxiety we might almost say alarm. He was a sea-captain of the name of Bream. As this gentleman was rather eccentric, it may interest the reader to follow him, from the commencement of the day on which we introduce him.
The first act of the sisters, on recovering, was to double the amount on Ruth's list of poor people, and to work out another sum in short division on the back of an old letter. "Why did you deceive me, dear?" said Mrs Dotropy, on reaching the street after her visit.
But Lady Openhand makes a mistake, I think, she does not consider the poor; she only feels deeply for them and gives to them." "Only feels and gives!" repeated Mrs Dotropy, with a look of solemn amazement.
"Which he will very soon be, my love," said Mrs Dotropy, "for he is sure to be splendidly nursed, now he has got back to his old quarters with these admirable Miss Seawards. But tell me more about this sad wreck. You say that the fisherman named Joe Davidson is safe?" "Yes, I know he is, for I have just seen him."
The poor woman could go no further, so Billy again took up the story. "You know," he said, "that our kind friend Miss Ruth Dotropy has been greatly taken up about us since father went went home, and it seems that she's bin writin' to Lun'on about us, tellin' all about the wreck, an' about our mistake in goin' to sea, last trip, without bein' inspected, which lost us the insurance-money.
We'll buy all her socks yes, and put our own price on them too; capital!" "Who is Bella Tilly?" asked Mrs Dotropy. "A young governess," replied Jessie, "whose health has given way. She is an orphan has not, I believe, a relative in the whole world and has been obliged to give up her last situation, not only because of her health, but because she was badly treated."
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